Quick answer: Do nofollow links help SEO? More than most people think. Google quietly updated how it treats nofollow links in 2019, and the conventional wisdom hasn't caught up.
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What Is a Nofollow Link?
A nofollow link is a normal hyperlink with one small addition:
<a href="yoursite.com" rel="nofollow">Your Business Name</a>
Google introduced the rel="nofollow" tag in 2005 to solve a specific problem: blog comment spam. Shady operators were dumping links into comment sections across the internet to game rankings. Google's solution was elegant in concept. Website owners could tag a link to say, essentially, "this link exists, but I'm not personally vouching for it."
Dofollow links, by contrast, pass what the SEO industry calls "link equity" from one site to another. For nearly two decades, the simplified version of link building strategy was: get dofollow links, ignore everything else.
That was fine advice. Until it wasn't.
2019: Google Quietly Changes the Rules
In September 2019, Google announced two new link attributes:
- rel="sponsored" for paid and affiliate links
- rel="ugc" for user-generated content like forum comments
And then, almost as an afterthought, Google also changed how it treats nofollow. Instead of treating it as a hard directive ("ignore this link"), Google announced it would treat nofollow as a "hint" that it may use when crawling and indexing.
Translation: nofollow links are no longer guaranteed to pass zero value. Google now reserves the right to count them when it decides the context warrants it.
They did not provide a formula for when that happens. (Of course they didn't.)
According to Ahrefs, 10.6% of all backlinks to top-ranking sites are nofollow. That's not a rounding error. Top-ranking sites are accumulating nofollow links at a meaningful rate, and they're not collapsing in the rankings because of it.
So Do Nofollow Links Actually Help SEO?
The honest answer: not the same way dofollow links do. But the "they're worthless" camp is operating on outdated information.
Here's where nofollow links move the needle:
Real traffic is real traffic.
A nofollow link from a high-traffic website sends actual visitors to your site. Those visitors can call you, book a job, or fill out a form. Google notices that traffic. Google notices engagement. None of that requires a dofollow tag to create an indirect ranking signal.
Brand signals compound.
When your business name appears consistently across reputable sites, local directories, news outlets, and review platforms, Google builds a clearer and more confident picture of who you are. According to Google's own data, customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable when it has a complete, consistent online presence. The link type matters less than the pattern.
Crawl discovery doesn't check the tag.
Googlebot still follows nofollow links to discover pages. If you have a new page that hasn't been indexed yet, a nofollow link from a frequently-crawled site can speed up the process. That's a real, practical benefit that has nothing to do with link equity.
A natural profile includes nofollow links.
If every single link pointing to your site is a pristine editorial dofollow link, that looks suspicious. Real websites get links from Wikipedia, Yelp, local news sites, social profiles, and forum posts. Most of those are nofollow. Going out of your way to only accumulate dofollow links is, somewhat ironically, the thing that can raise flags.
The wildcard.
For nofollow links from genuinely authoritative domains, Google may apply some weight even without the explicit dofollow signal. There's no public formula for when this happens. But it's no longer accurate to say it never does.
Where Local Businesses Collect Nofollow Links (Without Even Trying)
Here's the thing most local service businesses don't realize: almost every major platform where you need to be listed is nofollow by default.
- ✓Google Business Profile (link back to your website: nofollow)
- ✓Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor (nofollow)
- ✓Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn (nofollow)
- ✓Local news mentions (usually nofollow)
- ✓Wikipedia (nofollow)
- ✓Chamber of Commerce directories (often nofollow)
If you've been avoiding these because "they're nofollow," you have been refusing free visibility because of a rule that stopped being fully accurate in 2019.
Consider this: 46% of all Google searches have local intent. That's billions of searches per day from people looking for a plumber, a chiropractor, an HVAC company, a restaurant. A business with accurate, consistent listings across 40 reputable directories is going to outperform a business that is only hunting dofollow backlinks from guest posts, regardless of what the link attributes say.
Nofollow vs. Dofollow: The Actual Comparison
| Dofollow | Nofollow | |
|---|---|---|
| Passes link equity | Yes | Rarely / potentially |
| Google crawls it | Yes | Yes |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes | Yes |
| Counts as a citation | Yes | Yes |
| Looks natural in a link profile | Yes | Yes (most links are nofollow) |
| Best source | Editorial mentions, authority sites | Directories, social, press, reviews |
The headline: dofollow links are the priority if you're actively building links. But a healthy, realistic link profile includes a large percentage of nofollow links, because that's what legitimate websites accumulate by existing in the world.
What This Actually Means for a Local Service Business
If you run an HVAC company, a plumbing outfit, a landscaping crew, or a chiropractic practice, the practical translation is straightforward.
For landscaping businesses in particular, our Landscaping SEO guide breaks down how to build the local visibility that brings in real customers.
Stop treating your nofollow presence as second-class. Show up in the directories, get the Yelp page, claim the Google Business Profile, get listed in the local Chamber. These citations and mentions matter for local search regardless of what the link tag says, because local SEO is partly about consistent, trustworthy data across the web.
A Local SEO Agency builds the consistent citation footprint across directories that makes these mentions compound over time.
The businesses that win in local search tend to have a broad footprint of mentions and citations across dozens of legitimate sources. Some dofollow. A lot nofollow. The breadth is what compounds.
Chasing only dofollow backlinks while ignoring your directory presence is a bit like refusing to show up to a networking event because the business cards there are printed on matte instead of gloss. The cards matter less than the fact that you showed up.
FAQ
The Bottom Line
Do nofollow links help SEO? Not the way a strong editorial dofollow link does. But the old "nofollow equals worthless" answer stopped being accurate in 2019, and for local businesses it was never quite right in the first place.
The better question is: are you showing up in the places your customers and Google expect to see a legitimate local business? If yes, nofollow links are a natural byproduct of that. If no, optimizing your link attributes isn't going to fix the underlying problem.
Build a real presence. Let the links sort themselves out.
An AI SEO Agency can help ensure your content and citations are structured for both traditional search and the emerging AI-driven search platforms.
(You can come back and argue about dofollow vs. nofollow after you've claimed your Google Business Profile. Those priorities are in the right order.)
Not sure how your business's link profile and local presence stack up? A free audit from HereFirst covers your website, Google Business Profile, reviews, citations, and competitor snapshot — so you know exactly what to fix first.
Request Your Free Online Presence Audit